Eric Margolis, author of War at the Top of the World, discusses the dangerous situation created by excessive U.S. and N. Korean bluster, the military-industrial complex’s anticipation of profits from a conventional weapons buildup, the limited U.S. military options against N. Korea and the foreign aid extortion game played by North and South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.
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Eric Margulies is Foreign Correspondent for Sun National Media in Canada, and he's the author of War at the Top of the World, and the new one, American Raj.
He's got an article today that Lou Rockwell is running over there at lourockwell.com called Okay Mr. Gates, What Now?
Eric Margulies joins us on the phone from Paris, France today.
How are you, Eric?
I'm just fine, Scott.
Thank you so much for joining us on the show today, short notice like this.
Well, I like your short notices, they're always pushing me into combat.
Oh, good.
Well, so, let's talk about Korea.
I don't know much, but I have a gut feeling that this whole nuke test thing is going to blow over, and we're not really in danger of having a war on the Korean Peninsula, are we, Eric?
Well, I don't think so, but as I said in my column, you know, this has become like a ritualized combat, a kabuki drama, where the U.S. and North Korea issues blood-curdling threats against Japan and South Korea and the U.S., and at the end of it all, the U.S. and South Korea and Japan end up bribing North Korea to be good, to be quiet.
But what makes this one different is that Secretary Gates has announced that there may be a maritime interdiction program, where, because they're worried about North Korean nuclear technology finding its way to the Middle East, and that's a pretty Israel.
That's a pretty hollow excuse, isn't it?
That's John Bolton's proliferation security initiative thing there, where they're just a bunch of American pirates, basically, on the high seas.
Well, it is illegal, I think, unless the U.N., which is sort of under America's thumb right now, sanctions it.
Then it has some weight of international law, but it's dangerous, because North Korea has said that if any of its ships are stopped on the high seas by American or its allied ships, that it will consider this an act of war and will retaliate.
And there are lots of American targets around North Korea.
There are 27,500 American troops in South Korea.
These are the troops, American troops, that have been there since the Korean War in the 1950s.
There are American aircraft constantly flying over the borders or hitting into North Korea, and there are American warships now all over the area, too.
So it's a target-rich environment, and Korea really could retaliate, but size its normal threats, if attacked, that it will unleash its artillery and rocket batteries against Seoul, South Korea, which is only about 25 miles from the demilitarized zone.
Well, a few important points there.
First of all, is there really a history of North Korea exporting nuclear technology via shit to the Middle East, to the bad guys over there?
Well, it depends who you ask.
If you ask the neocons, they'll tell you that the North Koreans have shipped the missiles or missile parts to Iran, which form its new Shehab missile.
But the Iranians deny that, and it may be just neocon agitprop.
There is no other major, really, example of North Korea shipping stuff out.
But that doesn't mean that they couldn't do it, because North Korea is strapped for cash and they live on extortion, threatening outside countries and getting paid off to do it.
And they need money desperately, and if some Arab states or Iran came and offered them millions and millions of dollars in hard cash, they might be tempted to share some nuclear technology.
The U.S. is very worried about that.
They're worried that North Korean nuclear weapons will get to terrorists.
So that's very unlikely.
But the real concern is about Israel.
And that's what's always motivated the neocons to get involved in this faraway Korean issue, which didn't seem to have any relevance to the Middle East.
Well, you know, I saw Chinese official hagiographer Stephen Hayes filling in for Bill Kristol on the Fox Sunday morning thing while I read the transcript.
And he was saying, oh, this North Korean nuke test proves we've got to do something about Iran immediately.
Well, good luck, boys, I hope you'll be the first to parachute into North Korea with daggers in your teeth.
That's why I titled my article What Now, Mr.
Gates, or what the hell are you going to do about it?
Because Secretary Gates, who should know better, has said, well, we can't stand for that.
This was his, those were his words.
We won't stand for North Korea being a nuclear power.
Well, when a big, great power talks like that, it's got to back it up.
Otherwise, you look like a fool.
And what is Mr.
Gates going?
North Korea is a million man army.
They're very tough.
It's not a tiny little country like Panama or even a small country like Iraq, whose danger and military power is enormously overinflated.
This is a country that can really fight back.
Pentagon estimates say that a U.S. ground invasion of North Korea would cost two hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dead.
Maybe it's less, but still a real war.
The U.S. does not like to fight real wars anymore, like fighting against little countries like Somalia that can't really fight back, and Grenada, Panama.
North Korea is tough.
And the problem is that with a couple of nuclear weapons now, the U.S. can't even threaten North Korea anymore with nuclear annihilation or else it may seek South Korea and Japan blown up or Guam.
So the U.S. ability to act there has been very limited.
And there's no way that the U.S., which has no more money or troops, is about to invade North Korea and take away its nuclear weapons.
Well, a friend passed on this note from his nephew serving, they call it, in Iraq.
He said, you should see the orgy of joy among the Pentagon and contractor ranks about the North Korea nuke test.
The army is already going forward with ditching its lousy counterinsurgency planning and training so they can get back to the big, fun, expensive force on force warfare they fantasize about.
Don't believe the long faces.
They all desperately want to have a land battle with a conventional force.
Well, the dear leader should be really the dear leader in Washington.
You're quite right, Scott, because Secretary Gates just announced recently that the U.S. was abandoning the concept of conventional war and was going to move to reconfigure the Pentagon to fight guerrilla wars in the third world.
And that's to read the Muslim world.
And that is produced very long faces in the military industrial complex.
So now with the dear leader in North Korea acting up, that gives a good reason for, for example, making more F-22 fighters, which it just announced that they're closing the production line on the F-22s because there was no threat of conventional war.
And as you say, now it's only on the horizon is the threat of naughty North Korea.
So, yes, he has joy in Industrialville, USA.
Well, now, this whole proliferation security initiative and the threat of intercepting North Korean ships on the high seas, is this simply a Gulf of Tonkin pretext waiting to be put into effect here?
I'm I don't think so, because, you know, the thing is, what next if Korean ships are arrested on the high seas by U.S. or South Korean or Japanese forces, North Korea will retaliate.
And we talked about different ways it can retaliate, attack American planes, ships, bombard South Korea.
Then what are you going to do then?
Fire missiles into North Korea?
The North Koreans could ride that out easily.
There's nothing to destroy in North Korea.
It's like Afghanistan.
So what does the U.S. do?
The U.S. has very limited capability.
It can put more naval blockade, but they get North Koreans get most of their supplies from China.
But that won't affect it.
So really, the only thing the U.S. can do is either hit them with nuclear weapons or a land invasion or mine their harbors or something like that.
But I really don't think that the U.S., which has no troops and no money and is stuck in two non-winning wars right now, is about to launch a war against the very tough North Koreans.
I just can't imagine they can't be that crazy.
Yeah, well, and the threat of one, however low, is good enough to get some F-22s sold.
So why make it hot?
Why risk everything?
And that's really the thing, too.
I'm no expert on the Korean Peninsula, but the capital city of the South, Seoul, is just how many kilometers from the D.N.
It's, I don't know, 25 miles.
It depends where Seoul is.
It's northern suburbs are well within range of the heavy caliber North, long range North Korean guns that are dug into the DMZ and long range rocket batteries.
North Korea built a special kind of, I think it's a 203 millimeter howitzer that will hit Seoul very easily with enhanced munitions.
And it's sort of kind of holding Seoul to ransom.
And the U.S. is very concerned about it.
And there's the North Korean army is drawn up, you know, 30, 30 miles north of Seoul.
It's quite possible that if things got out of hand, that we were in a real military crisis, that the North Koreans could strike South and occupy much of South Korea before the United States could take any kind of decisive action.
So it's a very tempting thing for North Korea because this would result, but Kim Jong-il has promised that his father, Kim Il-sung, promised that the Kim dynasty would preside over the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
Well, and in fact, there was at least some reporting, I hate to refer to The New York Times for my insight, but they said that, listen, you know, this whole nuke test is basically about Kim solidifying his support among certain factions of the military so that they'll support his now announced succession to his 26 year old son to be dear leader three there.
Well, I think that's an element, but I think there are other factors as well.
And one of the certainly it's interesting, Secretary, former Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked, why would you know why you're so concerned about Iranian nuclear weapons?
He said, because if you're on a nuclear weapon, it would limit our ability to act in the region.
Yeah, exactly.
Leading the Middle East.
And so we can thank God for that.
Right.
I mean, the history since the invention of atomic warfare is that America has never attacked anybody that could nuke us back or even nuke our allied state.
And so the fact that the North Koreans have been pushed to nuclear weapons by the Bush administration is actually probably the number one guarantor of peace in this bizarre world we live in.
You're right, Scott.
And if Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon, he would still be in power.
So obviously the lesson is not lost on these people.
Nuclear weapons are useless military weapons, but they're very effective politically.
And they keep the national security.
This is just what the Koreans have done.
And I think from their perspective, they did the right thing.
All right, everybody, that's Eric Margulies.
He's the foreign correspondent for Sun National Media.
He's the author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj Liberation or Domination.
Thanks so much for your time again on the show today, Eric.
Cheers.
All right.
